Control of Cyber-Physical Systems

Modern physical processes need to interact tightly with computational/digital components such as navigation systems and computational devices. These systems are usually described by the term cyber-physical system (CPS). Models of CPS are by nature complex and hybrid in the sense that they combine discrete transition systems for computational parts with continuous differential equations that represent physical processes. This makes the design of the controller for CPS very challenging. In addition, they are required to perform complex high-level tasks. Examples of such complex specifications are of the form “pick an object from location A and drop it at location B while always avoiding all the obstacles O in the path and reach charging station C whenever the battery is low.” Such complex specifications can be formally expressed using temporal logic formulae or a class of formal languages recognized by automata. In this topic, we work in the following key areas: